The early Premiership television selections will see Celtic play after our rivals more often than not.
We’re now a matter of days away from the start of our title defence, with Ross County lying in wait at Celtic Park on Saturday.
Fittingly, the 12:30pm kick-off will be the first game of the Premiership season, with the rest of the matches taking place later on Saturday and Sunday.
As a result, Celtic will have the chance to take an early lead at the top of the table with victory over Malky Mackay’s side.
But we shouldn’t get too used to playing before our likely title rivals Rangers. The following weeks’ television selections will see us playing catch-up fairly regularly, game wise at least. (SPFL fixtures)
On matchday two, we will face Aberdeen at Pittodrie almost 24 hours after Livingston have visited Ibrox.
Matchday three sees Rangers at Ross County for the 12:30pm Saturday television kick-off, while we host St. Johnstone later that afternoon.
The following fixture sees us visit Ibrox, while we’re second up on matchday five again. Rangers will again be in the Saturday lunchtime slot at St. Johnstone while we host Dundee at 3pm that day.
On matchday six, the last week we have full television details for at present, we will play first at Livingston before Rangers host Motherwell.
Of course, the pressure isn’t likely to be quite as intense at the start of the season. That may be a positive for us in what looks like a testing run of games.
We’ll travel to Rangers, Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibernian and Livingston inside the first round of fixtures, while our rivals have home matches against the latter four and ourselves.
With all of that considered, and Champions League football added in to the mix, it is a demanding start for Brendan Rodgers’ side.
Let’s hope we can show some consistency from the get-go.
In other news, the Celtic support were treated to some new culinary delights on Tuesday
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
